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If there were ever a year in which the last defenders of civility cry out for a truth-in-advertising law for politics, 2008 apparently will not be it. Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus today laments the pervasive untruths swirling around this election season — destroying in their path any hope we may have had for an honest campaign.

You know the routine: mock, lie, distort, mislead, feign insult — then repeat often enough until the message is accepted as fact. The last two presidential nominees who attempted to rise above the negativity and actually run an honest campaign — Al Gore and John Kerry — both went down in defeat, against an opponent who proved he had no qualms about resorting to savagery, lies, distortions or whatever else it took to win the race.

Will we ever see an election in which the two final contenders shake hands before the start of the general election campaign and vow to behave as gentlemen (or ladies) for the ensuing months — actually mean it — and then live up to their promise? OK, I can hear the chorus of guffaws and naive-calling from here.

Nonetheless, with three months still to go before the Nov. 4 general election, Sen. John McCain’s team seems obsessed with striking below the belt. Most blows involve some twisted variation of the same tired theme the GOP rolls out every four years — the message it believes must resonate among the masses if it has any hope at all of winning: “(Insert opponent’s name) is not like you, and he (or she) doesn’t share your values.”

Apart from the series of often thinly disguised sexist and racist overtures that have pummeled American ears for the past year, perhaps the next lowest common denominator of the 2008 campaign thus far has been the series of highly negative attack ads the McCain team has rolled out questioning Obama’s virtues.

In particularly poor taste was the recent ad suggesting that Obama is nothing more than a celebrity — all fluff and no substance,” featuring less-than-subtle comparisons with two iconic ditzes, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. But if substance is what the American people are looking for, Sen. McCain certainly failed to deliver one recent Sunday when both candidates were the featured guests on different public affairs programs.

Sen. McCain used his airtime to repeatedly attack his opponent’s honor, motives, decency, judgment and intellect — among other things. One was left with the sense that he would have had very little at all to talk about if he had been forbidden from uttering the words “Senator Obama”. McCain seems to have all but forgotten that pledge he made back in April — just four months ago — to make his upcoming general election campaign an honest and “respectful” one. Uh-huh. Whatever.

Contrastingly, Sen. Barack Obama dedicated the entirety of his interview to detailing his vision for getting America back on the right track — and somehow he managed to do so without ever even entering attack mode. (Memo to Sen. McCain’s team — study up on that technique if you want your substance message to go a little farther.)